Broca's Brain - Carl Sagan

...the pain of childbirth is especially marked in human mothers because of the enormous recent growth of the brain in the last few million years. It would seem that our intelligence is the source of our unhappiness in an almost literal way; but it would also imply that our unhappiness is the source of our strength as a species - Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan is easily my favorite 'popular scientist' of the 20th century. Other than Sagan, the other two 'popular scientists' that I am most familiar with are Richard Dawkins and the late Richard Feynman, and they pale in comparison to Sagan. While Dawkins is in incredibly intelligent man (see 'The Selfish Gene') he comes off as boorish when he ventures outside the realm of science and ends up attacking the views of others (see 'The God Delusion' and the aftermath that followed). Sagan also criticizes religion (see below) but does so in much more respectable and intelligent fashion. Out of these three, Feynman may have had the biggest impact in his field of choice, but is mostly popular not for his popularization of science, as much as the popularization of his figure. Feynman was the rockstar's rockstar when it came to popularity, and thus his most popular books mainly feature stories about how great, funny and quirky he was (not that the more technical works don't exist). Carl Sagan had a different type of charisma than Feynman, he made you care about what he cared about, and most importantly tried to get other people to see science and nature with the passion that he did.

Broca's Brain is a collection of essays written by Carl Sagan that are loosely organized into sections. The first section entitled 'Science and Human Concern' is mostly a collection of essays that deal with the 'big picture' of science. Covered are topics of the nature of human knowledge and inquiry, a criticism of our current system of education with Einstein as an example, and an essay praising science and technology in our world. Sagan is the best when he's discussing the 'big picture' of our world and where we fit in it. Often his writing turns sentimental and romantic (the subtitle of this book is 'Reflections on the Romance of Science') but he makes it work.

The following two sections cover paradoxes and hoaxes in 'alternative science' and essays about various astronomical subjects in our solar system. Although the section on people who support incorrect theories or pseudoscience (or as he calls them 'paradoxers') is pretty interesting, a large chunk of the book is spent in this section debunking an obscure scientist from the 70s that had some pretty radical (and ridiculous) ideas about how our earth formed. I ended up skimming this chapter and some of the subsequent chapters about our solar system (Really Carl? A whole chapter on how we name craters on the Moon?) because I found them pretty dull. This could be a fault of mine, after the surface details I have always found astronomy pretty boring, but I felt like the book lost steam at the halfway mark. In addition, because the book is more than 30 years old reading about our 'current' understanding and where we can go in the immediate future, makes the book feel especially dated. It's obviously impossible to keep the momentum going on a book that is a collection of essays, but I could have done with a pared down version of the solar system section.

However, Sagan redeems himself in the final part of this section on space and astronomy. Sagan is known for his work on SETI (search of extraterrestrial intelligence) and his support of space exploration and he holds up his reputation here. Like Fox Mulder, I can imagine Sagan sitting in a basement office working under an 'I want to believe' poster. Being a scientist and skeptic, he doesn't believe that little green men (or any other color) have ever visited our planet. He does however, believe that the odds are in our favor for there to be a large contingent of intelligent beings on other planets throughout our galaxy. The push to look for these civilizations with radio telescopes may be his enduring legacy.

The final section, entitled 'Ultimate Questions', is also excellent. Here Sagan tackles the battle between reason and religion, our view of the universe, and psychedelic drugs. His opinion on religions can be summed up by the following quote:

These mystical insights must mean something. But what? Human beings are, by and large, intelligent and creative, good at figuring things out. If religions are fundamentally silly, why is it that so many people believe in them?

Sagan believes that religions are mostly wrong, but he also understands that in some way humans are 'prewired' for it, and that there must be something fundamental that religions tell us, even if it is about ourselves. Instead of attacking everyone who believes (like Dawkins), he tries to understand why people believe, and what kinds of truth can be found in our adherence to religion as a species. He also makes an interesting attempt to connect the creation of religions and explanations that they give us to the universal human experience of birth. I'm not sure if I 'buy' his argument, but it's an interesting thought nonetheless. Sagan even attempts to connect these ideas to our current theory of cosmology and the creation of the universe. He argues that our whole idea of the big bang, and the different ways the universe can play out can be related to the stages of childbirth. We consider ourselves an analytic and reason driven society, but is it possible that we still view the world through our own experience? It's when he raises these kinds of questions that Carl Sagan makes you really think, and contemplate what it means to be human.